[legalxml-econtracts] FYI: Virtual Goods Conference

[Daniel Greenwood <dang@MIT.EDU>]

Dear Fellow eCommerce Enthusiasts:

I encourage members of this list to consider submitting a paper for
presentation at the International Workshop for Technology, Economy, Social
and Legal Aspects of Virtual Goods, to be held May 22 - 24 2003 in Ilmenau,
Germany.  The web site for this conference is available at:
http://virtualgoods.tu-ilmenau.de/2003/

As a member of the Program Committee, I'd really like to see some of the
perspectives voiced in this group represented at the conference.

Please pass forward the call for papers (text below "signature" line).

Thank you,
 - Daniel Greenwood

==============================================
|  Daniel J. Greenwood, Esq.
|  Director, E-Commerce Architecture Program
|  MIT School of Architecture and Planning
|  77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 7-231
|  Cambridge, MA 02139
|     http://ecitizen.mit.edu
|     or http://www.civics.com
|     dang@mit.edu
==============================================

Call for Papers
International Workshop for
Technology, Economy, Social and Legal Aspects of
Virtual Goods,
May 22 - 24 2003 in Ilmenau, Germany.
http://VirtualGoods.tu-ilmenau.de

Sponsorship by the GI Working Group ECOM
Sponsorship by IFIP Working Group 6.11 Communication Systems in Electronic
Commerce


What it is about:

The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) in the Internet is
difficult, because it is simple and cheap to copy, transfer and consume
digital content, e.g., MP3 music, Flash films, or electronic articles.
Napster (meanwhile out of market after domination by BMG with no success),
Gnutella and Freenet demonstrate how easy the Internet can be used to
circumvent the authorized content providers. There are even future scenarios
where no high-level music products will exist any more. Exisiting approaches
to solve the problem are proprietary and mutual incompatible, they establish
small closed user groups. Moreover, they haven´t overcome a fundamental
conflict between content providers and consumers. Content providers try to
restrict the usage of their products by their customers in order to prevent
unlicensed distribution. On the other hand, customers ignore these
restrictions and share files for free. Content providers and customers treat
one another as enemies with conflicting interests. Current technology does
not give satsifactory answers.


We are convinced that any business model of virtual goods must include not
only the virtual objects, but also the human actors and their personal and
economic interest.



The goal of this conference is to bring together experts from scientific and
practical fields, researchers from different disciplines, developers, and
users all interested in electronic commerce of virtual goods and to assess
current methodologies and to bring forward new research directions.


We expressly welcome research contributions from different fields, including
computer sciences, economics, business, law, human sciences and other
relevant disciplines.


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Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to, the following
aspects:
Digital rights management
Peer-to-Peer systems
Payment for virtual goods
New business models for virtual goods
Solution architectures
Legal aspects
Inter-cultural aspects
Security and privacy
Content protection
Watermarking
Cryptographic mechanisms
Virtual phenomena, e.g., presence, id, storage...
Semantic content, e.g. recognition, plagiarism, identification

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Paper Submission Guidelines
Papers should be in Portable Document Format (.pdf).
Papers should be written in English and typed in at least 1-1/2 line spacing
in a font no smaller than 11-point.
All material on each page must be printable within a rectangle of 18 x 23.5
cm (7" x 9.25") in a single column format.
The total number of pages should not exceed 12 pages.
The cover page or first page of each paper should include:
title
link to http://VirtualGoods.tu-ilmenau.de/2003/name_of_paper.pdf
author name(s)
affiliation(s) and e-mail address(es)
abstract
Personal vitae of the author(s) can be attached at the end of the paper as
an option.
All paper submissions need to be sent to juergen.nuetzel@tu-ilmenau.de.

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Publishing in the Web
Accepted papers will published exclusively in Web.

The papers will be found under the following address
http://VirtualGoods.tu-ilmenau.de/2003/name_of_paper.pdf.

The cover page or first page of each paper should include this link.

The copyright remains with the authors without restriction. However, for any
other publication a reference (link) to Virtual Goods Workshop is required.


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Technical Commitee
General chair:

Rüdiger Grimm

Multimedia Applications
Technical University Ilmenau
ruediger.grimm@tu-ilmenau.de

Program chair:

Jürgen Nützel
Computer Architectures
Technical University Ilmenau
juergen.nuetzel@tu-ilmenau.de

Local chair:

Thomas Böhme

Institute of Mathematics
Technical University Ilmenau
thomas.boehme@mathematik.tu-ilmenau.de


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Program Committee
Juergen Nuetzel, Technical University Ilmenau, DE (chair)
Nathaniel Borenstein, IBM Lotus Division, Ann Arbor MI, USA
Borka J. Blazic, University and Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, SLO
Karlheinz Brandenburg, Technical University Ilmenau, DE
David W Chadwick, University of Salford, Manchester, UK
Ee-Chien Chang, National University of Singapore, SG
Jana Dittmann, Uni Magdeburg, DE
Sandro Etalle, University of Twente, NL
Ed Gerck, Safevote Inc., San Rafael, CA, USA
Daniel J. Greenwood, MIT, Boston MA, USA
Paul Judge, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Peter Kropf, Université de Montréal, CAN
Dirk Kuhlmann, Hewlett Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK
Deepa Kundur, University of Toronto, CAN
Ulrike Lechner, Uni Bremen, DE
Paolo Nesi, University of Florence, IT
Günther Pernul, Uni Regensburg, DE
Ted Selker, MIT, Boston, MA, USA
Einar Stefferud, Internet Visionary, Huntington Beach, CA, USA
Frank Stoll, UBS, Zürich, CH
Volker Tschammer, Fraunhofer Fokus and Chairman of IFIP WG 6.11, Berlin, DE
Herwig Unger, Uni Rostock, DE


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Important Dates
March 1, 2003
 Full papers submitted

April 5, 2003
 Notification of acceptance

April 20, 2003
 Deadline for registration

May 1, 2003
 Web-ready papers due

May 1, 2003
 Deadline for payment

May 22 - 24, 2003
 Workshop in Ilmenau